a social influence analysis of perceived organizational support

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Social influence research is important to the development of employee perceptions because it demonstrates that perceptions and attitudes do not form in a vacuum, but rather are shaped by the social environment (Erikson, 1988; Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978). Through relationships with others, a focal employee may be exposed to new information and different points of view. Accordingly, the expectation of most social influence studies is that individuals who maintain relationships with one another will have greater interpersonal similarity with respect to perceptions or attitudes than will individuals who do not interact with one another (Coleman et al., 1966; Festinger, 1954; Friedkin, 1993; Festinger, Schacter, & Bach, 1950; Homans, 1951). I expect that because coworkers are an important source of information about the job, the organization, policies, procedures, organizational events, and workplace norms (Morrison, 1993; Ostroff & Kozlowski, 1992; Rousseau, 1995; Rousseau, 2001), the information that employees acquire through their interactions with coworkers will shape their perceptions of organizational support. This will occur through three social influence processes: social information processing (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978), social comparison (Festinger, 1954), and social learning (Bandura, 1986). Social information processing theory contends that when employees do not understand what is happening in an organization, or when information is incomplete, they look to the organizational environment for information that helps them to better understand what is happening (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978). Social comparison theory argues that individuals compare their opinions and outcomes to those of other relevant individuals to help develop their own beliefs (Festinger, 1954). Finally, social learning theory states that individuals learn from their relationships with others by observing their behavior and making inferences for their perceptions based on the observed behavior (Bandura, 1986). 3
Researchers also consider the content of relationships that exist between individuals because different types of relationships, or ties, can be more or less influential (Friedkin, 1993; Ho, Levesque, & Rousseau, 2003). Studies examining tie content usually explore how friendship and advice ties influence perceptions or attitudes (Ibarra & Andrews, 1993). Friendship ties are strong, emotion-based ties connecting individuals with similar personal characteristics (Marsden, 1988) and as a result are useful for social comparison (Ibarra & Andrews, 1993). For instance, when an employee identifies with and interacts with a friend who is also an employee in the same organization, the treatment that the friend receives from the organization may serve as signal to the employee regarding how he or she is treated by the organization (Felson & Reed, 1986). When the friend has been treated poorly by the organization, the employee will interpret this information as a signal that he or she has also been treated poorly by the organization, and vice versa. As a result, an employee’s POS will become more similar to those of other employees with whom they maintain friendships. Although friendship ties are based on affect, employees share information or advice related to the completion of their work, organizational policies, procedures and events through advice ties (Ibarra, 1993; Morrison, 1993; 2002). Based on this, advice ties should play a role in social information processing: when employees do not understand what is occurring in the organization, they will use advice ties to gain insight. Advice-sharing exposes employees’ to their coworkers’ views and beliefs about the organization. This exposure or sharing will play a role in shaping beliefs about the treatment employees receive from the organization, leading to similarity in POS. While friendship and advice ties are fairly common in social influence studies, role models have been largely ignored in this line of research. This is surprising because role models 4
Page 1 and 2: TITLE PAGE A SOCIAL INFLUENCE ANALY
Page 3 and 4: Copyright by Thomas J. Zagenczyk 20
Page 5 and 6: with the expectation that reciproca
Page 7 and 8: LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Hypothesize
Page 9 and 10: PREFACE Thank you to my chair, Audr
Page 11: epresentatives of the organization
Page 15 and 16: Exploring the effects of social inf
Page 17 and 18: CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW Orga
Page 19 and 20: Levinson’s work explained the lar
Page 21 and 22: Eisenberger and colleagues (1986) a
Page 23 and 24: In subsequent studies, researchers
Page 25 and 26: the organization is based on percei
Page 27 and 28: esearch exploring the antecedents o
Page 29 and 30: a manager with high formal status s
Page 31 and 32: to carry out tasks on their own, an
Page 33 and 34: occurs because the norm of reciproc
Page 35 and 36: on their daily tasks. Examining thi
Page 37 and 38: coworkers are able to provide infor
Page 39 and 40: when forming perceptions and evalua
Page 41 and 42: identifies with and interacts with
Page 43 and 44: Miles, and Grover (2003) showed tha
Page 45 and 46: instance, a researcher may find a p
Page 47 and 48: likely to discuss sensitive issues
Page 49 and 50: it does not require that the role m
Page 51 and 52: among tellers. In one branch, no se
Page 53 and 54: eside outside of the focal individu
Page 55 and 56: To test the effects of social influ
Page 57 and 58: disseminating organizational inform
Page 59 and 60: less positive. Thus, the POS of the
Page 61 and 62: ties (and other combinations of str
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Research Setting Hypotheses were te
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network data concerning recurring i
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I explored these different requirem
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or not the employees with whom they
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frequent contact with person j, or
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employee held a leadership position
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correlation analysis has two steps.
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Organizational Support was .84, whi
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Table 5: Descriptive Statistics for
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Correlations. Two different types o
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Control Variables Table 7: Pearson
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Control Variables Table 9: Pearson
Page 87 and 88:
Results of Hypotheses Tests using Q
Page 89 and 90:
positions had perceptions of organi
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CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION AND CONCLU
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elationship may not have been consi
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social learning theory (Bandura, 19
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to provide false information is les
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Fourth, when studying social influe
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theoretical foundation of POS is so
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consistent with past research (Ibar
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employees who were widely regarded
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etween employees, only strong frien
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of structure and behavior. Academy
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organizational support. In J. A-M.
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Hammer, M. (1985). Implications of
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Kohlberg, L. (1963). Moral developm
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Mehra, A., Kilduff, M., & Brass, D.
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Rogers, E.M. (1995). Diffusion of i
Page 121 and 122:
networks: An introduction to Markov
Page 123 and 124:
Name of employee Yes Yes No No Name
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